As art pertaining to a travel safety device for a vehicle, which improves safety in driving, technology is provided (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Publication No. 2946995), in which a seatbelt device capable of tightening a seatbelt by means of an electric motor is employed, and an occupant is restrained in the seat by forcibly tightening the seatbelt by means of the electric motor when it is predicted that a contact between vehicles will occur.
The travel safety device for a vehicle which is disclosed in the above-described patent document tightens a seatbelt by way of a seatbelt device when it is predicted that a contact between vehicles will occur. Since this strictly aims at restraining an occupant in a seat when a contact occurs, the device operates at the moment when the possibility of a contact between vehicles is increased to a certain degree. Under such condition, occupants usually do not recognize that seatbelt is automatically tightened because the travel safety device just tightens the seatbelt.
Herein, it is highly desirable that an alarm to warn that there is a possibility of a contact between vehicles be outputted to an occupant at an earlier stage than automatic tightening of a seatbelt to restrain the occupant. However, the travel safety device described in the above-described patent document is not provided with a function of intentionally issuing an alarm to the occupant.